Apple Unveils New, Gentler Marketing Face

Apple's new CEO, Tim Cook, is turning out to be a more amiable brand advocate than Steve Jobs was. But Apple's nature as a paranoid, perfectionist company won't change (and thank goodness for that).

Steve Jobs "treated investors as if they were biohazards, rarely deigning to meet with them," Nick Wingfield writes on the Bits blog for the New York Times. "The disdain was not mutual, as an Apple stock chart for the last 10 years shows." By contrast:

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s new chief, showed on Tuesday how he planned to do things differently from his predecessor. Mr. Cook, who long handled the investor relations chores Mr. Jobs avoided, spoke at a Goldman Sachs conference on a wide range of topics, all the while displaying a bit more personality than he has in public presentations in the past. His appearance amounted to his most extensive public comments since he became chief of Apple in August, just weeks before the death of Mr. Jobs.

At the meeting, Cook tackled the issue of Chinese workplace conditions, and he was more responsive than Apple has been previously. Cook said Apple won't tolerate suppliers that violate its labor and human rights standards. Underage labor is "abhorrent," and though it's rare among Apple partners, complete elimination is a "top priority" for the company. Apple also plans to publish data on working hours for its suppliers.

When asked about how his leadership might be different from his predecessor's, Cook said Jobs "drilled" into all Apple employees that everything should revolve around making great products. Cook said he won't tamper with that. "Apple is this unique company, unique culture that you can’t replicate. I’m not going to witness or permit the slow undoing of it."

The appearance prompted ZDNet's Larry Dignan to effuse: "Tim Cook is the right person at the right time for Apple. Why? He’s better suited to fending off the hand grenades that come with being the most successful tech company on the planet."

The company and the CEO "are simply more likable to me," Dignan wrote. Cook "comes off as the anti-Jobs in many respects."

Make no mistake -- just because Cook has a more amiable disposition doesn't mean Apple is fundamentally changing. It's the same paranoid, secretive, perfectionist company it's always been. And that's a good thing. It's a formula that has produced one great product after another, even if it does fly in the face of the best marketing wisdom.

Do you think Apple and its marketing will fundamentally change under Cook? Let us know.

With the iPhone 4S and the new iPad, Apple seems to be taking an approach of incremental upgrades rather than great leaps forward. That worked well for them with OS X; over a decade each version hasn't been hugely different from the last, but the cumulative progress has been enormous.

Apple may be signifying using branding that this is an intentional strategy, by using product names very similar to previous product names. Indeed, the new iPad barely has a product name at all; it's just "iPad."

If the new iPad flies off the shelves like previous iPhone and iPad models, maybe that will silence the critics.

Just so. While I'm relatively unimpressed by the new iPad specs, I personally know three Apple fans who were waiting to sell their current model and buy the New 'n' Improved. That's the kind of customer loyalty and buying behavor that makes Apple a standout--and makes Apple Fan Boys so easy to parody.

Agree, too, with the idea that we've got to wait and see the impact of Apple TV. As I understand it, this was Jobs' last passion. It'll be fascinating to see how that plays out, given the iPhone precedent.

Once someone or something, a company in this case, reaches the pinnacle, we tend to look for fault, almost trying to pull them down. Because of this predisposition, we may be hypercritical of Tim Cook and Apple now. Rather than judge both the leader and the organization by this one announcement, we may have to grade their performance over a little longer period of time. The true test of Apple and Cook will be the market's reaction. If the new iPad flies off the shelves like previous iPhone and iPad models, maybe that will silence the critics.

Venturebeat's Jolie O'Dell says Apple's press conference today shows that the brand is unraveling. Her evidence: The tie-dyed looking logo, use of the word "resolutionary" on the landing page, Tim Cook's rumpled appearance, and the product name -- simply "iPad," as opposed to iPad 3 or iPad HD or something like that.

If Apple does start to come apart in the post-Jobs era, marketing is where it will show up first. Everything else has a much longer pipeline. We're going to see Jobs's hand in the design of products coming out in the next 3-5 years, but marketing has a cycle that runs a year or less.

O'Dell seems to be building a pretty big edifice on top of four flimsy pieces of evidence. Tim Cook didn't tuck in his shirt and now the whole company is collapsing? I don't think so.

@kicheko - Steve Jobs made it a goal to destroy Android because business, for him, was personal. Like many techies, he couldn't understand that there's nothing wrong with ripping off a competitor's design; indeed, that's how competition and innovation work.

Apple itself often ripped off ideas from other companies -- most famously, the original idea for a windowing GUI, developed at Xerox PARC -- and then was outraged when other people ripped the ideas off from him.

Apple's entire success of the last decade was looking at things that other companies were doing, and doing better at those same things. Apple didn't invent the digital music player, smartphone, or tablet.

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Is a massive, three-day industry event featuring A-list speakers like Bill Clinton and Malcolm Gladwell the right approach for a company seeking to generate awareness of its brand? Steve thinks that goes part of the way, but if brands want their names to stick they need to build communities.

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